Still, his words had done nothing to diminish the emotion running through her. Was it worth it, Juliet? Arista still yearned to know the answer, but what did it matter? She would live and die without ever knowing love.
“Gypsy,” Nic whispered into the darkness. He wrapped his fingers around hers, and for a second, her heart stopped. They were warm and calloused. Familiar. She started to tell him about earlier, about the errant thoughts flying around in her head, but he stepped closer and she forgot everything. The warmth of his breath caressed her cheek.
This was not part of their usual routine. Not at all.
In the dark, where no one could see them, anything could happen.
“I have something to tell you, but this is not the place. Meet me later, at the spot—you know.” He left before she could exhale. A key turned in a lock, a door opened and closed, leaving Arista alone. Nic had gone down a short flight of steps that would take him into the main living area, where Bones would be waiting for the packet. Arista pushed into the shared room and closed the door behind her. The lock clicked as it slid into place. What did Nic want to tell her? Arista tugged at the ribbon holding her mask in place. Cool air washed over her skin.
“Oh, Miss. A feather is missing,” Becky fussed. “I’ll have to have Mr. Nic find me another before you go out again.”
She vaguely heard Becky chattering, but was too distracted to pay much attention. What did Nic want to tell her? The look in his eyes had been strange. A sort of excitement mixed with pride. His meeting with Bones would not take long. She had to hurry. Filled with a sudden urgency, Arista began pulling the pins from her hair to loosen the wig. Becky swiftly pushed Arista’s hands away to do it for her. Arista fidgeted under Becky’s ministrations. She hated to be tended to, but didn’t protest.
When Bones had taken Becky in when Arista was thirteen, Arista hadn’t expected the scared, beaten-down girl to last more than a few weeks in Bones’s household.
She would never forget the night Nic had told her that Bones planned to sell her and Becky to the brothels. Arista would have died first, but to her shock, Becky had come up with the idea that had saved them both. What if she could turn Arista into a proper lady who could attend the parties where jewels and money were ripe for the picking? Bones’s greed had become their savior. He’d agreed, and from that moment on, Arista’s life was full of reminders about good posture and refined speech. Some days, Nic would sit in on these lessons and twist his mouth to form proper vowels. It became a game, much to Becky’s displeasure at having her lessons interrupted. His accent diminished somewhat, but he would always have that roughness that defined where they came from.
One night, soon after they began their new charade, Nic noticed that Arista had avoided one particular gentleman, a portly slobbering fool too drunk to stand. Instead she went for the tall, stately man who stood on the outskirts of the crowd.
Nic would have gone for the drunk, but Arista had noticed the way the man’s eyes darted around and he fidgeted with his hands. Signs that he was nervous about something. Sure enough, only moments after Arista walked away, he had been caught stealing a watch from the Duke of Rochester. In the commotion, Arista had taken a very nice pair of diamond cufflinks from the man who appeared focused, but was in fact high on opium.
Arista’s success at the balls had given Bones the inroad he’d needed to begin blackmailing the aristocracy. She had been his pawn for the last two years.
Becky took her duties very seriously. From the start, she had insisted that Arista look and act like a lady, as if they actually lived in some countryside manor house and Becky was in charge of preparing Arista to enter high society. The fact that their home was a twelve-by-twelve room—made of rough boards, with a lock on both sides of the door and no windows—seemed to escape the maid’s grasp.
Arista often wondered if the treatment Becky received from her last employer had somehow addled her sense of reality. Surely no one in their right mind would mistake how they lived as acceptable, yet Becky went about her daily duties with nary a complaint about their living conditions—or about the fact that they were virtually prisoners.
If not for Becky’s amazing skills as a seamstress, Arista would have been forced to wear whatever clothing Nic outgrew, or could find, tossed aside as unserviceable. As it was, Becky could construct beautiful costumes with hardly any resources. Lady A always went out looking like an aristocrat, though her costumes were always the color of night. Each year as Arista outgrew them, Becky had sewn something new, fancier most times, but always in black to allow Arista to hide in the shadows of the ballrooms.